Country Financial News

lending rate by 10 basis points and left its five-year rate unmoved, in a surprise to analysts who had expected cuts of 15 basis points to both. The recovery in the world's second largest economy has been slowed by a worsening property crisis, weak spending and lower credit growth.

NEW DELHI : Rainfall is expected to make a marginal recovery this week, but it may not be enough to offset August’s 40% deficit in regional rains, private weather forecaster Skymet said. Barring Northwest India, the remaining three regions are facing rainfall deficiency as El Nino gathers strength and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) climate pattern index remains neutral. Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO) is seen to contribute to El Nino as it gains strength in the coming weeks.

NEW DELHI : India’s first national policy on research and development in pharmaceuticals and medical technology sets out to create a ‘new drug discovery mission’, a move that would focus on Indian ailments and plug a gap in the world’s biggest manufacturer of generics. The policy also pushes the promotion of R&D in animal health care as about 70% of infectious diseases in the last three decades globally have originated in animals.

Narendra Modi. ISRO said the Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon on August 23, 2023, around 18:04 hours IST.

NEW DELHI : Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra on Monday downplayed the possibility of Brics countries developing a common currency. Briefing the media, Kwatra said deliberations among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have been focused on boosting trade in national currencies instead of on developing a common currency.

NEW DELHI : Vietnam is pushing for a visit to India by its Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, according to persons aware of the matter. India and Vietnam have forged a close strategic partnership in recent years.

₹2-3 per unit, they said it was not expensive anymore. Then there was a problem of intermittency. Then, the projects now are doing wind, solar, battery storage, and hybrid altogether to do maybe a peak power project, or an RTC project, or what I would like to call a high CUF (capacity utilization factor) project.

Porsche is exploring opportunities to start assembly of its iconic model SUV Cayenne in India amid an “unprecedented surge” in demand, senior industry executives aware of the German luxury carmaker’s plans told ET. Porsche AG board members Detlev von Platen, executive board for sales and marketing, and Matthias Becker, vice president of region overseas and emerging markets, are in Delhi to meet senior government officials, the sources said. They are scheduled to meet officials at Invest India and Niti Aayog on Tuesday. “Porsche is examining possibilities to locally assemble the SUV (Cayenne) to avail of tax benefits and expand its footprint in this fast-growing space,” a senior executive in know said on condition of anonymity. The company’s sales in India grew 64% on year to 779 units in 2022 with Cayenne accounting for almost half of it, the person said. Porsche did not share any information on the development in response to a query from ET. India recently surpassed Japan to become the third largest automobile market in the world. The country imposes 100% import duty on cars with cost, insurance and freight value of more than $40,000 and 70% on cheaper vehicles.

insolvency law and formulating a scheme offering subsidised interest rates are among the several measures suggested by an expert panel to the Centre for reviving stalled real estate projects in the country. The 14-member panel led by former NITI Aayog chief Amitabh Kant presented the committee's report to Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday. The Report of the Committee to examine the issues related to Legacy Stalled Real Estate Projects said to encourage financial institutions to fund stalled projects, a scheme offering subsidised interest rates, similar to MSME, is recommended. «Such a scheme would reduce perceived risk, stimulate financial support and lead projects to completion. »Additionally, the Central Government may consider a guarantee fund similar to MSME for such finances.

By Brendan Pierson

Is there a way to safeguard your assets through a prenuptial agreement before your wedding? A prenup pact can help you only to a limited extent. This is because there is no formal legislation on prenuptial agreements in India.

Are you planning to move overseas soon? If so, you should complete certain financial tasks before you become a non-resident Indian (NRI). First, let’s understand the difference between a resident individual and NRI. An individual is deemed to be a resident if (a) the person has resided in India in that financial year for 182 days or more; or (b) has been in India within the four years preceding that year for 365 days or more and been in India for 60 days or more in that year.

China, a.k.a. “the growth engine of the world,” has posted a series of disappointing economic data points over the last few months.

On 9 August, the scourge of ‘ragging’ claimed its latest victim when a minor student, barely a few weeks into his new campus life at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, ended it by jumping from his hostel building after harassment, torture and sexual debasement. About a dozen seniors prevented the administration and police from entering the campus while trying to ham-handedly doctor the crime scene to make it appear that the victim had committed suicide with no role played by others.

India’s latest inflation number at 7.4% comes as a shocker, with doom-speak all around. This is so because we have been talking of getting to 4%, which was axiomatically taken to be the ideal mark. This is analogous to the US, which has a target of 2%.

Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. From being a net importer, India has become a net exporter of handsets. Elsewhere in Asia, the contest is over semiconductors.

BRICS group of countries starts on Tuesday in South Africa, the only add-on member of what began as a quartet of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which formed the original ‘BRIC’ coined by Goldman Sachs two decades ago by clubbing together hot emerging markets for global investors to bet on. Such summitry has been a regular feature since 2009, and its most notable achievement has been the Shanghai-based New Development Bank set up by the group as a multilateral lender, an alternative to the West-led World Bank and International Monetary Fund. What’s new is the context: a geopolitical upheaval is underway in the post-Ukraine-war world.

It warned, however, that clerical work would likely be the hardest hit, potentially hitting female employment harder, given women's over-representation in this sector, especially in wealthier countries. An explosion of interest in generative AI and its chatbot applications has sparked fears over job destruction, similar to those that emerged when the moving assembly line was introduced in the early 1900s and after mainframe computers in the 1950s. However, the study produced by the International Labour Organization concludes that: «Most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI.» This means that «the most important impact of the technology is likely to be of augmenting work», it adds. The occupation likely to be most affected by GenAI — capable of generating text, images, sounds, animation, 3D models and other data — is clerical work, where about a quarter of tasks are highly exposed to potential automation, the study says. But most other professions, like managers and sales workers, are only marginally exposed, it said. Still, the U.N. agency's report warned that the impact of generative AI on affected workers could still be «brutal». «Therefore, for policymakers, our study should not read as a calming voice, but rather as a call for harnessing policy to address the technological changes that are upon us,» it said.

exports and imports of goods and services declined 2.5% on-year in January-June 2023 at $800.9 billion, think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said Monday. Exports of goods and services rose 1.5% to $385.4 billion in the first six months of the calendar year as against $379.5 billion in the corresponding period a year ago while imports dipped 5.9% to $415.5 billion from $441.7 billion in January-June 2022. In merchandise trade, exports fell 8.1% to $218.7 billion, while imports contracted 8.3% to $325.7 billion. “Data is showing modest decline due to weak global demand and losing competitiveness in labour intensive sectors,” said GTRI Co-founder Ajay Srivastava. Services exports during the six months grew 17.7% to $166.7 billion, while imports rose 3.7% to $89.8 billion. India exports goods to 240 countries and out of that, the country's outbound shipments declined in 134 destinations. Major countries where exports declined include the US, UAE, China, Bangladesh, and Germany.

“Desh Kya Chahta hai aur Bharat ka Bharosa kin par Hai!" India’s leading consumer data intelligence company, Axis My India, today announced that it is building a one-of-a-kind platform leveraging Google technology that aims to bring about a step change in people’s awareness, accessibility, and utilization of a slew of services. These include Government social welfare schemes, basic day-to-day amenities, employment opportunities, and healthcare benefits, and has the potential to benefit up to 250 million Indian households across the country.Built on Google Cloud’s scalable and secure infrastructure, Axis My India’s People Empowerment Platform (PEP) application will use Google Cloud’s generative AI (GenAI) technology to provide relevant information about government schemes and desired communication/content to citizens based on their individual and family needs.

Chandrayaan-3 mission's lander module with a rover in its belly is expected to touch down on the surface of the Moon around 6.04 pm on Wednesday, ISRO had said on Sunday. Live actions will be available on the ISRO website, its YouTube channel, Facebook, and public broadcaster DD National TV from 17:27 IST on Aug 23, 2023. The Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon after it spun into an uncontrolled orbit, Russia's Roscosmos space agency said on August 20.